Blood cultures have always been a critical tool in the management of life-threatening conditions like septicemia, enteric fever, infective endocarditis, brucellosis etc. Manual or conventional blood cultures were performed by inoculating large volumes of blood into nutrient broth or biphasic media and repeated subcultures were performed to detect growth. Automated blood culture systems were introduced in early 1970’s. Today there are wide variety of systems available in the market.
These have become the boon of the century in patient care. The automated blood collection systems allow: The detection of carbon dioxide produced during bacterial growth in the blood culture bottles by the use of fluorescent sensor technology. The same is done using another system by colorimetry. Some use infrared spectroscopy and some systems detect changes in the gas pressure as the growing bacteriae…
